Chancellor Merz has been calling on Germans to work harder. This is practically impossible for many working parents, as daycare centers struggle with staff shortages and reduced opening hours.
Starting today, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s center-right party, is holding its national conference — and one of the main topics up for debate is what Merz considers to be a “exaggerated” balance between professional and personal life. Many people work part-time, he has repeatedly stated, and for Germany to be prosperous, they need to move into full-time jobs. At the same time, a new study by the Hans-Böckler Foundation’s Institute for Economic and Social Sciences (WSI) shows that an increasing number of parents there is no other option otherwise work part-time due to lack of staff, closures and reduced opening hours at daycare centers.
“In the current circumstances, working parents are unable to plan safely and, in particular, women need to think twice before accepting or expanding gainful employment. The current debate about working hours is often wrong: firstly, we need massive investments in a really reliable infrastructure for early childhood education, especially in terms of staff. There is still a shortage of hundreds of thousands of daycare spaces,” said study author and WSI director Bettina Kohlrausch.
Faced with the sudden lack of daycare centers
According to data from the German Youth Institute (DJI), just over half of parents living in Germany require external childcare and, of these, only 33% report that their local child care options cover all hours required for work. Mothers mainly resort to these last resources when daycare centers operate at reduced hours or close completely due to illness and lack of staff.
Kohlrausch’s research, which interviewed nearly 900 families across the country and at all socioeconomic levels, showed that 54% of respondents faced a sudden lack of childcare. For 30% of affected parents, this meant reducing working hours, while 42% had to turn to friends and family to pick up the slack. For immigrants and low-income families, this last option is often not viable.
“I won’t be able to go back to work full time until my two children are in high school,” Rachel, a teacher in Cologne, told DW. Two years ago, she had to reduce her working hours after the daycare center attended by her children, now aged 3 and 7, had started closing early due to lack of employees.
“While I am grateful that this is possible in Germany,” she added, “it is becoming increasingly unsustainable with the increase in the cost of living. But a full-time contract is out of the question — we don’t have family nearby, and if the daycare closes unexpectedly or ends early, I won’t be able to work.”
“While I’m grateful that this is possible in Germany,” she added, “it is becoming increasingly unsustainable with the rising cost of living. But a full-time employment contract is out of the question — We don’t have family nearby and if daycare closes unexpectedly or ends early, I won’t be able to be at work.”
There are billions left to finance adequate childcare
Kohlrausch’s research also highlighted the fact that “unreliable daycares tend to exacerbate the unequal distribution of work of care between men and women and, therefore, gender-specific patterns in the distribution of care and paid employment. This also prevents greater participation of women in the workforce.”
Although the government has tried to encourage Germans to work more, investment in the daycare sector has been declining. Germany’s state development bank, KfW, found that, since 2022, around 10.5 billion euros missing across the country so that all families have access to reliable, quality childcare. The responsibility for creating and financing child care centers and training employees largely falls to state and local governments. According to the DJI, adequate childcare coverage varies greatly across Germany’s 16 federal states — with 23% of parents in the small city-state of Bremen reporting insufficient hours, but in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, just 5%.
Women bear most of the responsibility
The disparity is also large between men and women. According to the WSI study, 73% of men in affected relationships said their partners took over childcare when no childcare was available, compared to 39% of women who said the same about their partners.
Bettina Kohlrausch warned that eliminating the maximum 8-hour working hours, another suggestion put forward by the CDU to encourage Germans to work more, will harm women even more.
In its election program, Merz’s CDU targeted voters with family policies, promising more money for families, reliable childcare and improvements in parental help. Ten months into government, almost none of these promises have been fulfilled.
